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Scientists find remains of England's King Richard III

LEICESTER, England — He was king of England, but for centuries he lay without shroud or coffin in an unknown grave, and his name became a byword for villainy.

On Monday, scientists announced they had rescued the remains of Richard III from anonymity — and the monarch's fans hope a revival of his reputation will soon follow.

In a dramatically orchestrated news conference, a team of archaeologists, geneticists, genealogists and other scientists from the University of Leicester announced that tests had proved what they scarcely dared to hope — a scarred and broken skeleton unearthed under a drab municipal parking lot was that of the 15th-century king, the last English monarch to die in battle.

Photos: Richard III

Lead archaeologist Richard Buckley said a battery of tests proved "beyond reasonable doubt" that the remains were the king's.

Lin Foxhall, head of the university's school of archaeology, said the discovery "could end up rewriting a little bit of history in a big way."

Few monarchs have seen their reputations decline as much after death as Richard III.

He ruled England between 1483 and 1485, during the decades-long battle over the throne known as the War of the Roses, which pitted two wings of the ruling Plantagenet dynasty — York and Lancaster — against each other.

His brief reign saw liberal reforms, including the introduction of the right to bail and the lifting of restrictions on books and printing presses.

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But his rule was challenged, and he was defeated and killed by the army of Henry Tudor, who took the throne as King Henry VII and ended the Plantagenet line. Britain's current monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, is distantly related to Richard but is not a descendant.

After Richard's death, historians writing under the victorious Tudors comprehensively trashed his reputation, accusing him of myriad crimes — most famously, the murder of his two nephews, the "Princes in the Tower."

William Shakespeare indelibly depicted Richard as a hunchbacked usurper who left a trail of bodies on his way to the throne before dying in battle, shouting, "My kingdom for a horse!"

That view was repeated by many historians, and Richard remains a villain in the popular imagination. But others say Richard's reputation was unjustly smeared by his Tudor successors.

Philippa Langley of the Richard III Society — which seeks to restore the late king's reputation and backed the search for his grave — said that for centuries Richard's story has been told by others, many of them hostile.

She hopes a new surge of interest, along with evidence from the skeleton about how the king lived and died — and how he was mistreated after death — will help restore his reputation.

"A wind of change is blowing, one that will seek out the truth about the real Richard III," she said.

The location of Richard's body was unknown for centuries. He died in August 1485 at the Battle of Bosworth Field in the English Midlands, and records say he was buried by the Franciscan monks of Grey Friars at their church in Leicester, 100 miles north of London.

The church was closed and dismantled after King Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries in 1538, and its location eventually was forgotten by most local residents.

Then last year a team led by Buckley identified a possible location of the grave. Ground-penetrating radar was used to find the best places to start digging.

The team began excavating in a parking lot last August. Within a week, they had located thick walls and the remains of tiled floors. Soon after, they found human remains — the skeleton of an adult male who appeared to have died in battle.

He had been buried unceremoniously, with no coffin or shroud — plausible for a despised and defeated enemy.

Increasingly excited, the researchers set out to conduct a battery of scientific tests, including radiocarbon dating to determine the skeleton's age, to see whether, against the odds, they really had found the king.

They found that the skeleton belonged to a man in his late 20s to late 30s who died between 1455 and 1540. Richard was 32 when he died in 1485.

Appleby said the 10 injuries to the body were inflicted by weapons such as swords, daggers and halberds and were consistent with accounts of Richard being struck down in battle.

Appleby said two of the blows to the head could have been fatal. Other scars, including a knife wound to the buttock, bore the hallmarks of "humiliation injuries" inflicted after death.

The remains also displayed signs of scoliosis, a form of spinal curvature, consistent with contemporary accounts of Richard's appearance, though not the withered arm Shakespeare describes.

DNA from the skeleton matched a sample taken from Michael Ibsen, a distant living relative of Richard's sister.

Next year, Richard will, at last, get a king's burial, interred with pomp and ceremony in Leicester Cathedral.

King Richard III

Oct. 2, 1452 - Aug. 22, 1485

• He was king of England for two years.

• He was the last English monarch to die in battle. He died at the Battle of Bosworth Field.

• He has been accused of murdering his nephews who were staying at the Tower of London. Some modern historians doubt this.

• Much of what is known about him comes from the play "Richard III," by William Shakespeare.

• In the play, Richard famously cries, "A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!"

• His death ended a civil war known as the War of the Roses and began the Tudor reign in England with Henry VII, who was the father of Henry VIII and grandfather of Elizabeth I, who was a patron of Shakespeare's.

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